Emanuel Nobel

Emanuel Ludvig Nobel ( , ; Saint Petersburg, 1859 – Stockholm, 31 May 1932) was a Swedish oil baron, the eldest son of Ludvig Nobel and his first wife, Mina Ahlsell, grandson of Immanuel Nobel and nephew of Alfred Nobel. Businessman After his father's death, in 1888, Emanuel Nobel took over the running of the Nobel family's oil business, Branobel, an oil empire that was based in Baku and was the largest oil company in Europe, of which he and his brothers and sisters were by far the main shareholders, followed by his uncles Alfred and Robert. Carl Nobel, Emanuel's brother, was put in charge of the Machine-Building Factory Ludvig Nobel. Emanuel Nobel was a very forward-looking businessman, just like his father, who had instigated the construction of Russia's first pipeline and the world's first oil tanker in 1878, as well as the world's first railway tank cars in 1883. On 16 February 1898 Emanuel signed a licence agreement in Berlin with Rudolf Diesel, after having heard Diesel describing his new engine in a public lecture. The agreement allowed Nobel to build the world's first diesel engine plant in St Petersburg, and the engines were used to propel Branobel's fleet of oil tankers. Emanuel led Baku to a dominating role in the global oil industry and Branobel activities soon developed throughout the Caspian Sea, operating also in Grozny and Dosser. In 1888, Emanuel was host to Tsar Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark) in Baku and was then personally requested by the Tsar to accept Russian citizenship, which he graciously accepted. From 1891 until 1918, His Excellency Emanuel Nobel was also on the board of the Russian State Bank's Discount Committee. He was in charge of the company until he was forced to flee Russia in the Summer of 1918.